Thoughts on book publishing, editing, contemporary poetry, dementia, administrative memos, and teaching by the editor of Tinfish Press.

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

15 August 2017

I want to write an
honest sentence. “I don't want to kill people, but I will if I have
to.” He's pulling guns off his body in a motel room in North
Carolina as his computer screen cups a swastika to the camera. The
pale white woman with large glasses asks him about the woman who was killed; he assures her that more will die. He speaks in
dead logic, noun verb object, always an object of scorn. Animals. He says he
misplaced a second AK-47 for a moment: “imagine that!” Gun
grammar employs active voice, even when it's silent, wrapped around
its owner like a mink stole. On a walk with my bright blue
Schwinn, my father pulled me off the sidewalk into some trees. The police
had gone into the woods on the other side where an empty car was
parked. Just in case. Just in case someone should get angry and drive
to the mall. Just in case someone had been radicalized by his faith.
Just in case we were walking down that narrow brick-lined street at
the wrong time. Just in case the car was weaponized. The woman with
wide open eyes was killed; I want her eyes but not her end. To the
martyr go no relics save some iPhone video, a couple of photos, some
flowers laid inside a heart near Water Street. You can sit with a
relic. You can sing to it in frail voices, but you cannot rest within the instant gratification of grief. Which is his gun of choice,
the long or the short, the one in his pants or the one strapped
to his ankle? American murderers are good consumers, just like the
rest of us. “The master looks down on us every day from his
mountain,” a black woman says. This is nothing new, it's just more
visible. Identify this bearded white man, the one who beat up the
after-school aide who pushes the swings so well. As fashion
statement, hoods do better. My friend remembers turning a corner at
UVA and finding himself face to face with the Dalai Lama. In the
photo he appends, it's 5:11 p.m.; the Dalai Lama's right foot juts
out in covered shoes. Allmost the dandy, he holds his dark robe up.
“He smiled and nodded.”